Frank Sobotka being one of the most sympathetic characters on the show - i get that his situation is bleak but at the end of the day he strikes me as someone who's in complete denial about the way the world is going. there's a point about halfway through the season where he's at a health-and-safety meeting where they're talking about making things safer for workers by delegating more tasks away from manual labour. Sobotka snorts and says something like 'replacing us with robots, eh'. fair enough. the episode ends (i think) with a worker losing their leg in an accident. does this cause an epiphany for Sobotka? does it fuck!

anyway i know it's more complex than that, but he's a very flawed character beyond the obvious parental neglect and self-destructive hubris

There is a pretty overwhelming naevity to him, isn't there? The same whenever he's reprimanding Ziggy or Nick - he seemed to think that he is blameless/removed from the situation, despite being the one to introduce Nick to that world & Ziggy only wanting to be a part of what they do.

and he said S2 was his favourite because at it's heart, everything all boils down to two old men bickering over a church window, and nothing in the series that happens would have happened if it weren't for that petty argument.